Will you add more non-combat, or purely artistic, or stat-free, or random effect toy / fun / flavor items to the profession of my choice? – A multitude of players from all regions

Yes, especially considering they are some of our favorite things to add to the game. We can't promise that every profession is going to get equal amounts, but we definitely intend to spread them out more evenly, except for engineering. Engineers will always get more toys.

Archaeology is supposed to be about discovering, preserving, and honoring cultural items found, in order to learn from the past. Currently we don't do that. Instead we are forced to coldly vendor what we don't want. No donation to a museum, no return to the races of origin. Couldn’t we do something more important with these items? Can we expect more interesting stories with artifacts? Will you do something about this to make it feel like the player is getting something useful back, and perhaps remove a little bit of the random part of it so that it's more fun and focused? - Whitewnd (KR), Pusen (EU-EN), Unjoiner (NA/ANZ)

Originally, we didn't intend to create items at all when you completed a normal archaeology find, but that didn't feel right. So now we have these items that still don't feel right because you can't do anything fun with them. We are working on a more thematic and interesting way to consume the artifacts you dig up. These include returning them to the museums (for the devoted archaeologist) and the option to continue vendoring them (if you wish to continue your career as a cold-blooded treasure hunter.)

Additionally, we plan to add daily quests, a deeper story, additional skill gains, and the flexibility to focus on a specific race.

Some players may not have noticed that all artifacts have lore associated with them in the journal, even the grey ones. Every bit of it is Genuine Lore, and verified by our lore masters. So were the Dalaran Coins, of course, but not those silly Romance Novels.

Will professions at some point regain the ability to make upgradable items, such as the Weaponsmiths had in the Burning Crusade? It was quite a cool concept, and wouldn't be unfair if all crafting professions would gain at least 1 of those items. - Hydramith (EU-EN), Auryon (EU-DE)

The concept of upgrading a piece of equipment is a very cool idea that we'd love to revisit, but not as a best in slot item. A crafted BIS item removes that entire slot as an interesting drop choice, and it strongly forces players into specific professions. For example, if there is a crafted best in slot weapon, you can bet a vast majority of players will feel obligated to take up blacksmithing, as was the case in the Burning Crusade. The profession perks, which are reasonably balanced, already add an incentive to take professions.

Have you ever considered creating daily quests for professions other than jewelcrafting? - Superpotion (NA/ANZ)

We've mostly considered it for the secondary professions, since they are the most accessible professions to the most players. When we add another large chunk of recipes again, we'll evaluate each profession to see if dailies are a good fit.

Will enchanters ever get the option to create wands again (maybe other caster items as well using a blank template weapon that could be made by blacksmiths), as they tend to be extremely rare outside of the a couple locations and the new ZA/ZG loot tables? - Flayre (NA/ANZ) [/i]

In general, we want to add more fun themed recipes to enchanting like the magic lanterns. Concerning wands, we've been discussing several options, and most everything we could do with them is still on the table.

Will there be a way to distinguish profession nodes on the minimap for those that have two gathering professions? - Discordia (LA)

That’s a good suggestion. We recently added the ability to see your target and focus target on the minimap, but the feedback we’ve received from players is that they clutter up the map too much. Coming up with unique icons that work with only a few pixels might be challenging. We’ll give it a shot though.

Will you provide a way to speed up the acquiring of glyphs usually acquired through research and glyph books? Glyph books (Book of Glyph Mastery) are hard to come by now that people spend so little time in WotLK content. - Furlqt (NA/ANZ), 에르네**린덴만 (KR), Kånê (EU-ES)

Yes. We will be changing the discovery spells so they can teach all possible glyphs, and the books will simply provide a no-cooldown method to do the same thing.

Are there any plans to make Archaeology more closely connected with other professions? Like make inscriptors able to create scripts of the night elves that would help with the fragments or something like that? - Алонжи (EU-RU)

We feel like we can better tune and balance the archaeology experience if we keep it mostly self-contained. However, we've discussed additional methods for gaining fragments through dailies and potentially as rewards for turning artifacts. Nonetheless, it's quite unlikely that another profession will ever craft keystones or fragments.

Are there any plans to make Chaos Orbs BoA or even BoE? - Mommycow (NA/ANZ)

Yes! They will be unbound in a future patch.

Do you have plans to make gathering professions more attractive instead of making them skills that you would be inclined to take up on one of your alts? - Nanahuatzin (LA)

Yes, this is an ongoing goal. Specialized nodes and raid/dungeon drops for gatherers are a good start. Because gathering professions essentially pull currencies from the ground, we feel they are a valid choice for many players, especially those who want to be self-sufficient.

Are there any plans to change Original and Burning Crusade profession skills so that new players can skill up their profession skills more similar pace with leveling? Low level trade skill materials on Auction House are generally expensive for new players, and new players must feel they are stuck if they should left low level zones just for profession skill up, while they want to increase both of them at same pace. - Whitewnd (KR), Гаркара (EU-RU)

Yes. Definitely. As we move forward, making sure older content has a smooth flow is a top priority. In fact, we have Top Men working on it. Top. Men.

Are there any plans to somehow change Archeology and Fishing, which have become notoriously tedious? Do you have plans to make archaeology more appealing, maybe with puzzles or something else? - Boîndal (EU-DE), Kalani (NA/ANZ), Käworu (LA)

Yes. The dailies help with fishing skill gain, and we plan to add archaeology dailies as well. We've also discussed further incentivizing fishing in pools with faster skill gain.

We would love to add a puzzle mini-game to archaeology, and may do that one day, but we can’t make any guarantees. There are some other ideas floating around for moving between archaeology sites more quickly, and we've been brainstorming for rare random events when you are digging or fishing.

Our overall goal for these professions is that it shouldn't be too difficult to max out your skill, but catching every fish and finding every artifact should be a long journey.

I don't think it'll work that way. ( I could be wrong, please correct me if I am)
What's already soulbound probably wont get unbound (this was the case with engineering pets) but all future Chaos Orbs will be Unbound.

I don't know why, after the first 6, I still read these and expect any of the questions to be interesting (the mark of a fool is returning to the same thing several times, expecting different results). Unique node icons for gathering? Use Gatherer. Really. It's nice to have some sort of dialogue with the devs, but I'd really prefer quality responses. If the answer is "we're thinking about it, but we don't know yet," that should just be assumed. They've screamed until their text went blue (lol, see what I did there) that they read player feedback, but apparently enough people still think that "Blizzard doesn't care," that they have to waste their time responding to things like that.

By the same token, it appears that the devs just choose questions they can either answer vaguely/uselessly (example--the wands question. What kind of answer is that, other than completely evasive? WELL WE COULD DO ANYTHING AT THIS POINT, GUYS) or questions that aren't relevant or are easy to answer. The problem with yes/no style questions (like the crafting keystones one) is that it opens the opportunity for a simple no answer. That doesn't tell us what they *are* working on, only one of the many things they are *not*.

I'm disappointed in the decision to go away from upgrade-weapons/armor lines. They wouldn't have to be bis (and wouldn't be, compared to heroic mode loots, anyway) but they added a way for professions to feel more significant rather than just a way to add extra sockets or use stronger gems.

I can understand where some people would be excited about the chaos orb change (for crafting on their alts) but in my experience I really haven't had problems obtaining them. My main is sitting on 20 right now, actually. And, when that change goes live, that will pretty much crash the market for crafted items. Hooray.

only way i will be happy about the chaos orbs is if chaos orbs are no longer needed in the current tier.Without a gathering profession as a blacksmith the only way i make money that isnt 10g tips is with chaos orbs.

I don't think it'll work that way. ( I could be wrong, please correct me if I am)
What's already soulbound probably wont get unbound (this was the case with engineering pets) but all future Chaos Orbs will be Unbound.

They'll all be unbound. It's what happened with Nethers in TBC.

Also: WOOOOO on the Inscription change. That needs to happen right _now_ though. Some glyphs are selling for 500g each for skills that are learnable at level 25. Makes it a nightmare for newer players who have no gold.

Lame answers. They could have just answered all the Archaeology questions in one go. and picked a few different questions to answer. I would have loved to see some of the compensation for enchanters de'ing in groups answers since they are thinking about adding drops for gathering professions. (every one should get to roll like they do on "enchanters" drops). Or some talk about making old recipies available through some other means.

Or hell even talk about plans for a fishing over haul. One of the things I was looking forward to the most was the talk of the fishing overhaul from blizzcon. Oh well animal crossing is pretty cheap for the wii now so I could get a fix that way.